


a kiss is just a kiss

by mollivanders



Series: collected rebelcaptain prompt-a-thons [3]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Caretaking, Comfort/Angst, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, Minor Injuries, Scars, Serious Injuries, Sick Character, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2017-06-10
Packaged: 2018-10-24 07:35:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 5,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10737090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mollivanders/pseuds/mollivanders
Summary: These are collected prompt-fills for the Tumblr platonic kiss and hug ask meme.





	1. a kiss to bruised skin

**Author's Note:**

> These are collected prompt-fills for the Tumblr [platonic kiss and hug ask meme](http://ladytharen.tumblr.com/post/159996465894/send-a-ill-generate-a-number-platonic). We'll see how well I stick to that.

_for anghraine_

In a swift movement, Cassian links an arm around her waist to throw her. She falls hard on the training mat with a frustrated noise, cursing her mistake. A soft whoop echoes from the soldiers congregating in a corner but she ignores it, curling back up into a defensive posture. A smile is playing at his lips and she narrows her eyes in determination. She is absolutely not going to let him get away with this.

A few months ago, she’d have had him on his back in no time. 

(At least he’s learning.)

No words pass between them as they circle each other, their breath escaping in short puffs. In a moment, she spots a weakness and lunges to the side, nimble hands pitching him past her, and he turns around, trying to duck away. He parries her attack and she turns, calculating, and dives to his left, hooking his leg behind her and throwing him over. He lands with a _thump_ and rolls away before she can keep him down.

A soft murmur spreads through the crowd and she blows the hair out of her face.

“Focus, captain,” she says, and sees something dark and warm swimming in his eyes. Her body thrums, alive with anticipation, and she’s sure she looks the same to him. He steps alongside her, move for move, his center of gravity balanced this time, and lands a hit on her side. She stumbles across the mat, catching her feet and pivoting to right herself.

She’s breathing hard, sweat falling into her eyes, dancing on the balls of her feet. The match grows in intensity, and she steps closer, landing a hit for every one that he wins in turn. But years of living on the edge of her wits give her the advantage and she ducks low, seizing her moment. Cassian lets out a strange noise as she sweeps his feet out from under him and she lands on him, pinning him to the mat.

A faint struggle – a tense breath – and then he relents, his body liquid under hers.

“Salud,” he says and she grins as excited murmurs and a tittle of laughter run through the crowd. “Though I think you prefer the audience.” She lends him a hand, helping him back up, and sways under their combined weight.

“Didn’t even notice them,” she says, still grinning. He is very tall next to her, her senses hyperaware of his every movement. “Done?”

They head back to their quarters. She rolls her shoulders, stretching them out as Cassian punches in the entry code. He follows her in and she peels off her training clothes – sore, aching from the match, but more relaxed for the practice.

Cassian frowns, taking her in. “I didn’t think I hit you that hard,” he murmurs. 

She frowns in surprise and cranes her neck to see where he’s looking. “You didn’t,” she says. She’d felt that one when she’d fallen on the mat. “I didn’t land very well, that’s all.”

“I’m sure you did,” he says, and she jumps as he traces the offending mark. A soft noise escapes her as he leans down to kiss the bruise, the tender flesh oversensitive to his touch. “Still,” he adds, his fingers fluttering over her skin in wistfully light touches, “I’m sure I can make it better.”

She turns to face him, tugging him closer, and smiles brightly at the look on his face.

“We’ll see,” she says, and pulls him in the direction of the shower.

_Finis_


	2. a kiss on the knuckles

_for jenniferjuni-per_

She, Chirrut and Baze were holding out their corner so the rebels inside could escape when she sees a limp and unresponsive Cassian being dragged away by some stormtroopers.

For a moment her heart stops.

(And then she’s running.)

She punches her way out of the corner, yelling at Chirrut to cover her, and ducks low as his bowcaster sprays a path before her. Her fists come faster and faster, shoving soldiers and fleeing civilians out of her path, until she caught up with Cassian. There isn’t any time to breathe, no time to rest, before she’s pulled out her truncheons and beats the life out of them. They fall, small crumples at her feet, and she drops down next to where Cassian has fallen.

She can’t carry him alone.

“Cassian!” she yells over the din of the street fight, and yells it again until he groans, coming to. There’s a nasty bump on his head and who knows what other injuries.

“Jyn?” he asks, and forces his eyes open. It’s an effort. “What happened?”

“We need to retreat,” she instructs him, and mercifully the rebels have finally made it out of the building. Chirrut and Baze and working their way towards her, shooting back at an approaching AT-AT, and with a grunt she pulls Cassian to his feet. “I need you to run, okay?” she asks, knowing that’s too much to hope for but hoping whatever it is, it’ll be enough.

(She’s not leaving him.)

He murmurs an affirmative response and then they’re hobbling more than running to where their extraction ship has hovered down, ramp open and waiting.

Later, after the ship’s doctor has finally checked him out and Jyn has fended off the medical droids, Cassian fixes her with a stern look.

“That was reckless,” he says and he looks older than his twenty-six years.

She can’t look at him – won’t. Instead, she takes his hand and squeezes it.

“I had to,” she finally says. “Not when there was a chance you were still alive.”

She feels the sharp intake of his breath and shuts her eyes, fighting back the urge to cry. Not today, not when they had all made it, and not when he hadn’t been taken away to some unknown Imperial base. She desperately wants to curl up next to him, to hear the steady beating of his heart and the familiar timbre of his voice but holds herself back. His hand tightens around her own and her eyes fly open as he lifts her hand to his lips.

“Thank you,” he says, dropping one kiss on her knuckles, and then another, “for coming to get me.”

Her hands are cracked and bloody from where she’d fought her way through stormtrooper armor and filthy from the street fighting. She locks eyes with him as he takes her other hand and kisses it in turn. 

Something inside her breaks into a half-sob. She shuts her eyes, hands curling around his, and takes a deep breath to fight off a fresh wave of tears.

“I thought I’d lost you,” she says, barely a whisper, and opens her eyes again. Cassian shakes his head, serious as ever, and she holds her breath.

“Not with you around, apparently,” he says and she squeezes his hands. “No,” she says, her voice shaky, and sniffles. “No,” she repeats more firmly. The hint of a smile plays at his mouth and his thumbs rub soothing circles along her hands.

“Do you think,” he asks, and she braces herself, “you could sneak me out of here too?”

A half-laugh escapes her and she steals a look around the medbay. The ship’s doctor is busy with another patient and the droids are all engaged.

“I’ll see what I can do,” she says.

The look he gives her is reward enough.

_Finis_


	3. a scar kiss

_for leralynne_

She learned a long time ago she was not built for self-consciousness.

( _Self-awareness_ , Kay might say.)

There wasn’t space for it on the run, or among Saw’s partisans, or even in the brief homes she had shared with her parents. In those lives, there was no time for it either. Instead, you learned efficiency, expediency, and above all, security. 

Still, there is something in the way Cassian looks at her that makes her feel alive in ways she’s never known; ways that make her feel exposed and safe all at once. On the battlefield, she knows him – feels the tilt of his presence next to her and depends on it in spite of all of Saw’s lessons and her own instincts. Other places – those are hers, and his, and theirs alone.

(He hasn’t let her down yet.)

Years stretch over them, and somehow they keep surviving. They steal moments and lives and freedom and somehow, still, she yearns for something more. She aches for something she has never known and tries to gift it to him in pieces and parts, puzzled out between them.

Somehow, despite her self-doubt and her fears and her instinct to run – he seems to think it is enough.

(And still – he takes her by surprise.)

Once, when the sun was stealing into their quarters in hazy pockets of light, they had lingered over the dregs of victory. She had rested her face on the pillow, arms wrapped around it, as Cassian traced the scarred edges of her back with the tips of his fingers.

She has never known this kind of luxury.

“Are these from Rishki?” he asks, running his finger down a patch of scars the stretch from her shoulders down her spine. His voice is scratchy with sleep and she shakes her head, an old memory bubbling to the surface. “Wobani. Cat tails. Rishki was before.”

His hand stills over her but before she can turn to look at him, he’s slid around to face her back, the sheet tangling at his waist. His hands brace near her chest and she can feel his heartbeat where his pulse point touches her own. 

She holds her breath for a long moment before he stretches over her and dips a kiss at the top of the scar. He pulls away then presses another kiss to her, and then another, down the length of the scar and back up again. The scar is years old, damaged flesh long puckered over, but she feels every millimeter of skin between Cassian’s lips. His mouth drags a hollow along her back as she clutches the pillow tighter and her toes curl.

He’s asked before, about Wobani and Rishki and all the other places she’s broken out of. It’s almost foreign to him, a spy whose life revolved around not getting caught, though she knows he’s seen it from the other end. His palms burn bright stars next to her and his thumbs brush against the curve of her breasts as she arches back into him. She’s coiled, a tense spring ready to pounce, when he kisses a wet mark into the base of her spine and she groans, burying her face in the pillow.

“Do you want me to stop?” he asks, suspended above her, and she shakes her head, turning under him. His hands find hers, angled by her head, and she locks gazes with him.

“I want to see _your_ scars,” she says.

The look he gives her is entirely new.

_Finis_


	4. a hug from behind

_nonny ask_

There is always a hall, in every Rebel base, that is dedicated to the memory of fallen soldiers. Every time they have had to flee a base, they leave their comrades behind again and start anew. It makes her wary of the hall and she avoids it when she can, filled with holos and printouts and medals of rebels who died fighting the Empire. 

Saw had trained her to never look back. The more you thought about the dead, he’d explained, the more you thought about the cost of war, and the harder it would be to go back into battle – at least, for some.

As time goes by, Jyn is starting to realize that Cassian is not one of them.

She hasn’t known him to be melancholy but when they pass the memorial hall, he slows his steps and takes in the pictures of the missing and dead. She doesn’t know if he’s looking for someone in particular; it’s not something she feels privileged to ask. The Rebellion is filled with brothers-in-arms but Cassian doesn’t seem particularly close to anyone. He doesn’t have friends in the usual way, although there are fellow spies who he seems to respect more than others.

So despite herself – despite years of Saw’s training and her own instincts – she stops avoiding the hall. She stops taking the longer routes around it to get where she is going and she takes in the memorabilia left behind. She doesn’t often see those she recognizes – she is both too new to the Rebellion and too isolated within her own cadre – but she becomes more familiar with the faces and the lives they left behind.

One afternoon she’s lingering longer than usual, studying the face of a woman who doesn’t seem much older than her when her skin prickles in alarm. A moment later, familiar arms circle around her from behind and she lets out a tense breath.

(There is only one who would dare.)

“Do you recognize someone?” Cassian asks and she tilts her head back to look at him. He’s taking in the wall, his sharp eyes cataloging people like missing inventory, and she shivers, tugging his arms tighter around her. His eyes drop, meeting hers, and she looks back at the wall.

“No,” she says and leans into him. He hums noncommittally and follows her sightline. She’s never asked before, but perhaps now is the time. “Do you recognize anyone?”

“Yes,” he says, his tone suggesting only brevity. “I always do.”

 _He’s been in this fight since he was six years old,_ she thinks and wants to kick herself. His body is still relaxed around her though, no hint of the affront she’d once pushed him to. 

“Saw would never have done this,” she says, and points at a list of the newly missing and killed. “He said it was bad for morale to dwell on the dead. We never looked back.”

Cassian rests his chin atop her head and she shuts her eyes.

“Was there someone you lost?” he asks, his voice so low she doubts any of the passing soldiers could hear him if they strained but her lungs seize and she freezes in his arms. He senses it instantly, his arms securing her more closely, and she tries to track his even breaths to restart her own.

_Mayla, fourteen. Denis, cragged and patient. Pavis, the one who woke screaming in the night._

“It helps,” he says, since she cannot seem to speak, “to remember them. If you have someone to remember.”

(So many losses, of so many different kinds, and she wants to scream.)

Instead, she takes a shaky breath and blinks her eyes clear.

“If I go,” she says, “put me up there, will you?”

His arms tighten almost painfully around her, his head drops next to hers, and she can feel his heartbeat pounding through her chest.

(He never answers.)

_Finis_


	5. a kiss to the corner of the mouth

_for ruby-red-inky-blue_

She drags him to the medbay two days after they get back from Trigalis, a swamp planet she’d never even heard of before this mission. Cassian had reacted badly to _everything_ on the planet and it isn’t until the cough settles in his lungs that he relents and goes with her.

(However reluctantly.) 

“I shouldn’t be here,” he grumbles, casting looks around at soldiers being treated for serious injuries. Ignoring him, she gently pushes him back onto the cot, keeping an eye out for a medical droid. “You’re staying,” she says and frowns as he bends over again, an alarming crackling in his lungs as he coughs.

“Yes, ma’am,” he agrees, leaning back against the propped pillows. “Just don’t leave me here.”

The 2-1B diagnoses Cassian with the early stages of a lung infection and orders bed rest for seven days. Cassian looks at her in horror and she shrugs. “Take it up with Draven,” she says, privately relieved. “You’re marked as ‘contagious’ in your file. You may as well get some rest.”

“You may also be exposed,” the 2-1B informs her and Cassian’s eyes widen in alarm. She waves the droid away with the promise that if symptoms appear, she’ll report to the medbay immediately, unlike _some people_. She’s always been sturdy, and if she hasn’t caught it by now, she’ll risk it.

(After all, _someone_ has to look after Cassian.)

He leans on her heavily during the walk back to his quarters, coughing at uneven intervals, and the knot of worry around her heart tightens. Festian or not, he shouldn’t be in the cold like this. Inside his quarters, she ramps the heat up as high as the system will allow and puts in an order for a delivered meal. He’s sick; he’s entitled.

“I feel like hell,” he announces, swaying on the edge of the bed and looking up at her.

“Well,” she says, crossing her arms and raising her eyebrow at him, “maybe you should get in bed.”

He groans in frustration and flops back as if bed rest is the worst order he could have to follow. She rolls her eyes and crosses the room to tug his boots off.

“Jacket,” she instructs and he sits up, shrugging out of it. She’d rather that he stays warm under several layers but he’ll never sleep like that. Instead, she digs out the second blanket she’d left her one night and stretches it over him. He sighs happily, pulling it tighter, and she wants to roll her eyes again.

(Instead, something she can’t name tugs at her heart.)

“Take your meds,” she instructs, her voice softer than expected, and sits next to him with a cup of water. He studies her as he gulps the treatment down and leans back into his pillow. 

“Thanks,” he murmurs, reaching out to cover her hand with his own. He startles, about to take it back, perhaps concerned he will infect her, before she turns her hand over under his and clasps it. He looks like he wants to say something more but a cough breaks from his chest and he turns, covering his mouth.

“Yeah,” she says, struggling for words herself. When he sits back up he looks exhausted and truly sick. “You’re going to be okay,” she adds, and brushes the hair back from his face. They’d barely slept on the mission, three days spent back to back in the wilderness, and she’s honestly not surprised he got sick. He looked like hell before whatever strange sickness got to him. They all did.

(But he deserves the rest more than all of them combined.)

On impulse, she leans forward and presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth. His hand finds her waist on instinct but he pulls back almost instantly, frowning. “You’re going to get sick,” he complains and she shrugs, tracing the line of his law before dropping her hand.

“I don’t care,” she says. She really doesn’t.

(She really hates seeing him like this.)

“Well don’t say I didn’t warn you if do,” he says – but for all his warnings there is a light in his eyes that has nothing to do with his illness.

“Don’t worry,” she says, cupping his face in her hands again. His features soften just a little and he tilts his head back up to her. “I won’t.” She bends down and as his eyes falls shut she steals another.

(She’s sturdy. She’ll hold up for them both.)

_Finis_


	6. a 'far too long since we’ve seen each other' hug

_for irhinoceri_

He’s been away from base for weeks and now that he’s back – now that he’s _home_ \- he just wants to head straight for his quarters. He can’t remember the last time he slept and more pressingly, the last time he ate, but he’s sure K2 has a record somewhere. Instead, practiced professionalism holds him together at the seams. He crosses the hangar with weary but even steps, his pack slung over his shoulder.

(A steady thrumming in his chest calls out to him, a beacon home.)

He trusts he’ll find her. These days, he no longer worries that she won’t be here when he gets back. Even if she’s not _here_ , he trusts she is just out of arm’s reach, even if that reach stretches across the galaxy to sabotage or cripple the Empire. He used to worry, used to dread every mission that sent them apart, and tucked that worry deep inside where it couldn’t distract him.

(It turned out that she’d stopped worrying before he did, and the thought warms him.)

His feet follow a familiar path towards headquarters, a steady trudge through the fresh snow that always seems to accumulate within the base, as he checks off a mental list of everything he needs to do before day’s end. There isn’t much – but more than he’d like. And then suddenly, he freezes.

She’s there, standing at the end of the hallway. She hasn’t spotted him yet. She's busy talking to someone – one of the new Pathfinder trainees – and his heart beats a hollow rhythm within his chest as he waits for her to see him. He can almost read her lips from this distance – something about a new maneuver – when she throws her hands in the air, her body tilting with the motion, and her eyes lock with his.

She stops talking mid-sentence and the trainee stares at her in confusion before she mumbles something to him, waving him away. He doesn’t think he could tear his eyes off her if he tried. Slowly, he starts moving to her and she turns to face him fully, her breath coming in short puffs that gather in the frozen air. Soldiers and aides pass him in a rush, and somewhere down the hall, he can hear the edges of an argument.

None of it matters.

When he reaches her, he drops his pack and gathers her into a fierce hug, pulling her up on her toes, and she makes a noise that burrows its way inside him. He can’t seem to let go and he catches fragments of her relief against his chest, her fingers curled tight against him. She’s holding him so tightly it feels as though she’ll never let go either, as if this will always be, and he snaps back into reality. When they slide apart, the hallway chatter coming back into focus, their arms stay looped around each other. Her eyes are dry but very red and he guesses he might look the same.

“I’m glad you’re home,” she says, voice hoarse, and swallows past the lump in her throat. She looks brighter than he remembered and he studies her, memorizing this moment for all the others that come after. His eyes crinkle at the corners and he ducks his forehead against hers.

“ _Jyn_ ,” he says, his voice a breath of hope, and she smiles with unmuted joy, leaning back up to him.

(He’s ready for her kiss when it comes.)

_Finis_


	7. first kiss

_for greenfleeze / phoebe_snow_

As their feet crunch across the sands of the desert moon, Cassian listens for the rhythm of Jyn’s steps and berates himself in the same breath. They have what they needed – an audience with Saw. He doesn’t _need_ her anymore.

(And yet – he can’t stop thinking about her.)

It’s a long walk from NiJedha to whatever hole the old rebel has dug himself into and Cassian feels the passage of the day in how the sun slopes over his back. The hood over his head muffles most details but all the same, he keeps track of Jyn. She is a few paces in front of him, her shorter steps stumbling over the faster pace their captors set, but she doesn’t protest or complain. She’d said her piece back at the city; he supposed she was done.

(And yet – she could have cast the rest of them off, seized her moment, taken her chances alone. She hadn’t. Instead, she’d claimed them as _friends_ and for now, for another day, they lived.)

In the meantime, he has nothing but his thoughts to occupy him, and despite himself, they linger on her. They linger on the way she had rushed into the street to protect a lost child, they linger on the way she had called out his name before taking on a cadre of stormtroopers, they linger on how close she had stayed.

He shuts his eyes under the hood, trying to right his thoughts.

He never quite manages.

+

The flight back from Eadu isn’t long – only a few hours – but he spends most of it away from the motley collection he’d amassed, Jyn’s words ringing in his ears. He isn’t sorry – he wouldn’t take any of it back – but her words have curled their way inside him. Without a task to occupy himself, he keeps thinking of how she looked as she crossed him, how she had stood her ground and had struggled to speak at all, the cold shaking them to their bones, how the water had dripped in a _tap – tap – tap_ around them, the tension in their bodies primed to explode.

He must make a frustrated noise because K2’s golden eyes swivel onto him and he glances over from the corner of his eye.

“What?” he asks sharply and K2 looks away again. He doesn’t often solicit input from his only companion but for once he’d like some conversation, something normal, to take his mind off Jyn and the fury sliding off of her.

Suddenly, he recognizes the longing ache within him. He wants to talk to _Jyn_ again.

Ridiculous.

(And yet – she stays at the edge of his thoughts, from when they land to when he reports to Draven to when she marches off with Bodhi. She stays.)

+

“I’m not used to people sticking around when things go bad,” she says, her eyes smiling as much as her lips, and he finds himself leaning in, eager and young once more. “Welcome home,” he says, surprised to find himself smiling in turn, and if there was a moment, this is it. He wasn’t sure she would even listen when he showed up but he’d heard her in the Council room.

_Rebellions are built on hope._

The mantra he’d passed to her had spilled out of her mouth and he’d known – known that the Council would not listen and yet known that there was hope after all. His words, returned to him, had propelled him out of the Council room and back to his old comrades, pulling together _enough_ to punch through Scarif.

If hope was all they had, then hope would have to be enough.

(And yet – something holds him back. That same lingering hope, a promise that the Rebellion was not in vain, whispers _wait_ across the space between them.) She is just out of reach, a spark ready to light, and he holds back.

It’s not the time.

But in the dead hours between Yavin IV and Scarif, his thoughts slide back between strategy and hope. She lingers, still, in the small spaces between his fingers, and he feels her edging closer, startles at her touch and checks to see if anyone has noticed.

For now, he puts the future away.

+

At this point, he can barely stand. He knows she’s supporting him, struggling under the weight of her damaged leg, and he leans against the elevator door.

Suddenly, she is close – much closer than she’s ever been – and the shattered memory of her steps across Jedha, her bottled fury on Eadu, her delirious hope on Yavin IV all jumble together in a single moment as she meets his eyes. He’s just thinking that he can’t breathe properly, even without his ruined lung, when she licks her lip, ending in a hesitant bite.

After all the words he’s thrown at her, he’s sudden bereft and can only shift himself closer, giving her an opening. 

It’s enough.

(She reaches up, her mouth finding his in a messy tumble and he falls against her, eyes sliding shut as her arms cradle him. His own words call back to him – _welcome home_ – and he leans into her, urgent and promising, before a pained groan breaks the kiss.

Something inside him breaks in protest.)

For all the things he cannot do, for everything he cannot have, he chooses this moment. He keeps his eyes on her, their expectant hope dying out between them.

(And yet – )

_Finis_


	8. an eyelid kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> These are collected prompt-fills for the Tumblr platonic kiss and hug ask meme. Please note that I am not a doctor and all the medical science is made up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These are collected prompt-fills for the Tumblr platonic kiss and hug ask meme. We'll see how well I stick to that.

_for imsfire2_

“Careful, sergeant,” the 2-1B warns her. “Over forty percent of his body is recovering from severe chemical burns. Prolonged contact with an unsanitized entity could still send his system into shock.”

Cassian stares up at her, thin breaths escaping his lips, and gives what looks like a painful version of a casual shrug. She tries to smile at him, scraping her fingers against her palms, but the panic of the last five days has still not subsided. 

“Thanks for getting me here,” he says, his voice barely a whisper, and the 2-1B makes a stressed whirring noise.

“At least you still have your looks,” she tries to joke and the corner of Cassian’s mouth pulls up. He’s only been out of the bacta for a few hours, and going back in soon after a doctor assesses his progress.

“Thanks for pulling me away from the vat,” she whispers, counting backwards from a thousand by sevens to keep from crying. She hasn’t cried as much in her life as she had in the last five days and somehow is still not out of tears. “I appreciate it.”

He’d been covered in the mystery chemical the Empire was brewing, only saved by covering his face so that he didn’t inhale any. The powder had scattered everywhere, creating a painful rash which grew into deep burns the longer it maintained contact. It had to be removed quickly, and thoroughly.

(They hadn’t been quick enough.)

She thinks of how he had pushed her out of the way, had fallen off balance and into danger himself, and how her hands had burned when she pulled him back, crying out with pain. Whatever she had felt, he had felt a thousand times worse, and now, she couldn’t even comfort him.

“Alright, Captain Andor,” a cheerful doctor says, bustling over. “It looks like you’re headed back for the bacta tank.”

“How much longer?” he groans, stealing a look at Jyn that she doesn’t miss, and fear laces her heart once more. 

“Well now,” the doctor says, looking at her datapad, “you have tissue damage to approximately fifteen percent of your body left, though nothing so serious as what you came in with!” Jyn stares, baffled at this very un-soldierlike doctor. “Another two days, at least.”

“Is he going to need assistance after that?” Jyn asks, interrupting, and the doctor tilts her head. “That’s likely,” she says, “though I must say you’re doing much better than I expected. We can figure all that out later,” she adds, noticing that Cassian is already dozing off, exhausted from the short interaction. “Either way, back to the bacta tank with you!”

She must be wearing all her emotions openly because the doctor clears her throat awkwardly and adds in a gentle tone, “you can say goodbye, dearie, but he’s in good hands.”

 _Careful, sergeant,_ the droid had warned her. Desperately, she scans his face, relaxed in sleep as it never was awake, and feels her heart clench. Quickly, gingerly, she leans down and presses a soft kiss upon his closed eyes, casting a prayer into the unknown. The doctor hums as she walks by, giving Jyn a reassuring squeeze of the arm which she cannot acknowledge.

(When they put him back in the bacta tank, she finds her usual chair. And she waits.)

_Finis_


	9. a kiss to the knuckles (again)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> These are collected prompt-fills for the Tumblr platonic kiss and hug ask meme.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These are collected prompt-fills for the Tumblr platonic kiss and hug ask meme. We'll see how well I stick to that.

_for letthepeoplesay-oh_

He hadn’t seen her in almost two months. While the days had settled like an anvil on his heart, he wouldn’t normally be worried. After three years, she’d done her share of deep covers with no problems.

But Jyn – Jyn was still Jyn. Unpredictable, prone to improvisation, and fond of trouble.

He spots her across the hall, dangling on the arm of the older Imperial officer she’d been tasked with. It had taken her three weeks to even get close to him and then she’d had to balance earning his trust with keeping him at arm’s length to draw out the operation. Jyn wasn’t the first choice for the mission either – it was the sort of mission Princess Leia might have been tasked with, before – but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

(And the Rebellion was sure as hell the galaxy’s biggest beggar.)

He’s here to extract intel and determine if the mission needs to be extended, though he had volunteered for personal reasons as well. The captain he’s talking with at this reception barely gets half his attention (though the younger man barely notices, dazzled by the infamous Captain Willix emerging from deep cover).

“Who are you serving under?” Cassian asks, taking a sip from the fluted glass a server had passed him and sneaking glances at Jyn. She’s not looking at him but his skin prickles at the way she’s holding herself – taller, shoulders squared, balancing on the balls of her toes.

She’s seen him.

“Under Admiral Piett,” the captain says, practically beaming. He’s in charge of – ”

“Yes, _Executor_ ,” Cassian drawls. “I’m familiar.” He pauses an appropriate length of time and cocks his head in casual interest. “Is he here?”

The captain points over at Jyn’s companion and Cassian frowns appreciatively. “Looks like he’s busy,” he says and the other man shakes his head. “No, no,” he argues, “he’d be happy to meet you. Let me introduce you.”

Piett is barely interested in Willix – a captain could hardly hold his attention, even as a spy – but they linger, joining the social circle.

“The Emperor will be quite pleased,” Piett says, rejoining his previous conversation as Cassian turns to Jyn.

“I don’t believe I’d had the pleasure,” he says as she offers him her hand. He lifts it to his lips, pressing a genteel kiss to the edges of her knuckles, and almost smiles at the flush of her skin at his touch. He barely recognizes her, styled like an Imperial lady, but she wears it well.

“Captain Willix,” she says with a strange accent, nodding. “Sorry, not familiar.”

The data chip he’d slipped from her palm makes its way to his pocket. “No reason you’d be,” he says, turning it over in his pocket. “I’ve been in the Outer Rim.” There is a coded time and location stamped on the outside and he nods, confirming receipt. She smiles, shrugging.

“There are so many officers,” she says with a purr, reaching for Piett’s arm, and Cassian’s stomach flips in empty jealousy. “I’m only a librarian, after all.”

Later – after she’s shed her disguise and he’s kissed her properly, though not enough to make up for all those missing days – he tells her the good news.

The Rebellion can decode the files she’s stolen. She can come home.

(If he thought he’d missed her in his kiss, when she draws him back down the wet heat of her mouth sends him in a tailspin.

 _They’re_ coming home.)

_Finis_

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [ladytharen](http://ladytharen.tumblr.com) on Tumblr if you want to say hi :)


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